John C. Wright's Journal

Belriose seems to have a question about the eternal war between the sexes, but I cannot parse her (or his, or its — on the web One Never Knows, Do One?) meaning. This is part of an ongoing discussion that began here.

Belriose says: "I already asked: I wonder why you seem to assume that everything that doesn’t fulfill the traditional roles is necesarly bad and devoided of the virtues of the old conceptions about romance or family."

This is not a question, but a rhetorical statement. I made no comments about ‘everything’ nor did I say it was ‘necessarily’ bad. A thing can be bad contingently; or it can have good and bad elements, where the bad outweighs the good.

What I said was this. Here is the whole passage, so you can read it in context.

"I confess I am the mere opposite of a feminist. I think men and women are different, and viva la difference. One difference between men and women is that men seek mates by pursuing them, and women seek mates by alluring them. This means that, even if we were, or could be taught to be, the same, men and women should differentiate and exaggerate masculine and feminine characteristics, for purposes of cold Darwinian calculation, even if not for fun. (As a minor example, when women dress distinctively from men, the dress itself becomes a feminine symbol, a poetic symbol, whereas if both sexes dress uniformly, the only way to allure a mate is for a woman to show her cleavage, or some other crass way to emphasize the sexual difference. It seems a paradox, but by being less feminine, the women is placed in a false position of having to be more crudely sexual to work the same allure.) Another difference, which is as much psychological as physical, is that men are more violent and more prone to violence. A related difference is that men can rape women and women cannot rape men. This means women should be armed, and drilled in the use of arms."

Now, picking this apart, it consists of one statement of fact (men and women are different) one observation from experience (men seek mates by pursuit, women by allure) and one conclusion which contains a value judgment (this means that sexual differences should be exaggerated, if not for reasons of ‘fun’ then also for reasons of Darwinian calculation). Obviously this value judgment need not apply to monks, eunuchs, or unisexual feminists, nor any one else who, for whatever reason, eschews sex and romance, or does not enjoy it. It does not apply to Albrecht the Nibelung, for example.

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(ht to  ) Want to be the first kid on your block to read all the swell stories in our Jack Vance tribute anthology, SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH??

Well, here’s your chance. Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist is doing it again, offering up an Advanced Reading Copy of the gorgeous Subterranean Press edition, illustrated by Tom Kidd.

To check out the details of the contest, go to:

http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2009/04/win-advance-reading-copy-of-songs-of.html

Good luck. And remember, cheaters will be blasted with the Excellent Prismatic Spray.

Someone asked which Blackstone I was quoting for my definition. This is from COMMENTARIES, Book Four (Public Wrongs) Chapter XV (Of Offenses Against the Person of Individuals) sections III.

I quote it here in full because of the inherent interest in the subject. One can trace the evolution of the elements of the crime of rape away from a property crime against the father of the victim to a crime against the victim herself. The term ‘civil law’ is a term of art, and refers to the Roman law.

III. A THIRD OFFENCE, against the female part also of his majesty’s subjects, but attended with greater aggravation than that of forcible marriage, is the crime of rape, raptus mulierum, or the carnal knowledge of a woman forcibly and against her will. This, by the Jewish law, was punished with death in case the damsel was betrothed to another man; and in case she was not betrothed, then a heavy fine of fifty shekels was to be paid to the damsel’s father, and she was to be the wife of the ravisher all the days of his life, without that power of divorce which was in general permitted by the Mosaic law.

The civil law punishes the crime of ravishment with death and confiscation of goods; under which it includes both the offence of forcible abduction, or taking away a woman from her friends, of which we last spoke; and also the present offence of forcibly dishonouring them; either of which without the other is in that law sufficient to constitute a capital crime. Read the remainder of this entry »

Belriose remarks:

"I just don’t see why you seem to assumme that feminity [sic] is the top value that always a man is looking for in a woman."

Top value? Perhaps not. A value? Certainly.

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In a recent discussion about, of all things, Dante’s INFERNO, video games, batgirl, and women in action films, an interesting paradox came up:

Modern women are supposed to be as violent and aggressive as men (see, for example, the popularity of Buffy, Xena, Wonder Woman, or Trinity) but are supposed to look like dewy-lipped glamour models, dressed alluringly (in either a short skirt, leather bikini, a red-white-and-blue swimsuit with high heeled boots, or skintight black leather respectively). The New Femininity portrays women with Barbie-doll looks and G.I. Joe action figure fighting skills.

By coincidence, I was reading this article over at Big Hollywood: Robert Avrech describes an encounter he has with Tuesday Weld blonde in a gunstore. She is against guns and violence, but her ex boyfriend is a stalker, and the police cannot protect her.

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Badiun proposes that, in my novel THE GOLDEN AGE, the Hortators, and the Sophotechs, formed a sort of hidden government, because they employed their considerable powers of persuasion to persuade people. I pointed out that the persuasion was non-coercive, ergo non-governmental. he replied that all governments are ultimately non-coercive, since government rests on the consent of the governed. I accused him of propounding a paradox: that law was the same as non-law. At this point, I need more space to clarify my position:

The beginning of the discussion is here.

"If government is to govern others by using coercion, i.e. strength, its own power must be derived from something else." "the government is based on the consent of the governed."

Ah, but to what, exactly, do the governed consent when they consent?

You propound a pretty paradox: that government must rest on the consent of the governed, since no government rests on force alone to compel the consent of the governed. Since government rests on the voluntary consent of the governed (you argue) ergo all consent of any body has the same moral suasion as obedience to a government: governments that do not rely on force are merely secret governments.

By that logic, the Coca Cola bottling company, General Motors, the National Rifle Association, the Democrat Party, the Roman Catholic Church, Oprah, and the New York Times are secret governments, because they can persuade so many people to adopt certain ideas and behaviors, including the consumption of cola.

Hobbes likewise propounded a paradox: he argued that if you agree to a highwayman to ransom your life, you must carry out the agreement even when the highwayman no longer has a pistol at your head, on the grounds that the agreement was a rational exchange — your life for your money. He went on to argue that even when princes acted like Highwaymen, rebellion was always illogical and immoral.

His argument suffered from the same shortcoming as yours. He drew no distinction between cases where the use of force is legitimate versus illegitimate, just as you draw no distinction between cases where the right to use force is present versus absent.

Might I suggest that the concept of ‘legitimacy’ is fundamental to this discussion?

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If you would like to read my novelette ‘Twilight of the Gods’ or peruse any of the other fine examples of scientifictional wonder appearing in the anthology FEDERATIONS, edited by John Joseph Adams, now is the time to buy! This handsome volume is on sale now, available for pre-order.

You can get it from the editor: http://www.johnjosephadams.com/federations

From Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Federations-John-Joseph-Adams/dp/1607012014/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238643922&sr=8-1

Or from Barnes & Noble:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=1607012014

 

(Myself, I am interested in reading that story by Many More! — Mr. More apparently contributes to a lot of anthologies, and many other commercial  ventures. I see his name all the time.)

This is not a book review. This is me wondering if I have gotten too old or too over-read to read SF books any more. The last three SF books (or SF-flavored books) I read were very well written, the product of enormous craft and talent on the part of the authors (whom any honest judge will tell you are more talented than yours truly), and yet, by the time I reached the end, I felt either indifferent, disappointed, or cheated.

Honestly, I doubt that my disappointment is due to any defect on the part of the respective authors. If I am any judge, they did just what they set out to do. But in each case, my suspension of disbelief was snapped by the intrusion of a foreign element—or, to be specific, an element that should have been there, but was not.

This kind of thing, if it is egregious, is a criticism of the author. When it is egregious, it is because the author has no idea of what human nature is like, or no intention of portraying human nature in a realistic light. The first error is a product of bad craftsmanship, the second is a decision, deliberate or not, to use art artificially rather than realistically. Such authors end up with cardboard characters, usually creatures of unrelenting depravity (see, for example, BLINDSIGHT by Peter Watts) or creatures who serve merely a mechanical function, like marionettes, that move as the author means them to move,to make a point in a morality play (see, for example, ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand). (Not that I object to depraved or mechanical characters per se: my favorite villain is Blackie DuQuesne, who is hardly an intricate character study: I have no objection to artifice in art.)

When it is not egregious, it is merely an observation that the writer and the reader have two different views of human nature, and so what seems natural to one seems awkward and artificial to the other. The author has the made-up characters, or, in a science fiction book, the made-up world, act in a way that the reader thinks the characters or world could not act. But this is a subjective judgment: the next reader who picks up the book will swallow whole what the first reader upchucked.

The reason why I suspect this is due to age or overreading is because my reaction to these three books is precisely the kind of reaction I notice in movie critics who express boredom for things still new and fresh to me. I don’t watch that many films, so old clichés are not old to me. Film critics watch films as their job, like slushpile readers at magazines, and see the same tired mistakes over and over again.

On to my non-review!

(SOME SPOILERS BELOW) 

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I saw this on Catholic and Enjoying It   a journal written by my water-brother Mark Shea (who groks were I am only an egg):

Dante’s Inferno: 

My comment: So very wrong you could not explain it, even with  charts.

Can’t socialists and libertarians agree that we should not support that form of government sometimes called Plutocracy, or Fascism, where the state power and the major industries are intertwined in incest?

The libertarian will blench in horror at the sight of populist demagogues assuming the power to fire the CEO’s of private corporations, forcing mergers, reorganizing Boards of Directors, setting or vetoing compensation and bonuses, interfering with contracts, establishing lines of production, types of goods produced, and generally usurping the rights of the owners and stockholders, and, ultimately, usurping the free choice of the customers and consumers: as when General Motors morphed into Government Motors, and the President vowed that car warranties would henceforth by underwritten and guaranteed by the taxpayers (or "tax-sheep" as the shepherds who shear them call them, or slaughter them for mutton).

The socialist will recoil from the sight of major industries, even if they pretend to be under state scrutiny, determining the course of political events: as when banks like A.I.G. contribute funds to politicians in return for political favors, bailouts, and winning the coveted status of "being too big to fail" (which means, in effect, being a permanent state subsidy). The question here is one of undue influence. In socialist theory, the means of production of certain industries (in some cases, all industries) are to be state-run for the sake of the common good. When an organization is still run on a for-profit basis, so that only the losses are socialized, and the gains are pocketed (as with the A.I.G. salary bonuses), this offends socialist theory, or should.

I admit I don’t understand how socialists think but I would think that even they would recognize that once the government is running an industry, the industry ends up running the government, if for no other reason than to prevent the taxpayers (who are now stake-holders in the industry) from suffering a loss. It end ups not being a ruler-and-ruled relationship, but a marriage of convenience: the good old boys network. The same small cadre of highly placed individuals makes the decisions both for government and industry, and neither the common good of the voters nor the wishes of the consumers, make any difference. The incentives which lure Caesar into favoring the state-run industry over any private or foreign competition also act to lure Caesar to favor the state-run industry into favoring the industry over the workers or the consumers.

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The Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge has unanimously elected a new dean, Dr. Katherine Ragsdale.  Chris Johnson at the Midwest Conservative Journal has the following on Dr. Ragsdale. I reprint it here without comment:

How radically pro-abortion is Katie Rags?  This radically pro-abortion:

And when a woman becomes pregnant within a loving, supportive, respectful relationship; has every option open to her; decides she does not wish to bear a child; and has access to a safe, affordable abortion – there is not a tragedy in sight — only blessing. The ability to enjoy God’s good gift of sexuality without compromising one’s education, life’s work, or ability to put to use God’s gifts and call is simply blessing.

These are the two things I want you, please, to remember – abortion is a blessing

and our work is not done. Let me hear you say it: abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.

I want to thank all of you who protect this blessing – who do this work every day: the health care providers, doctors, nurses, technicians, receptionists, who put your lives on the line to care for others (you are heroes — in my eyes, you are saints); the escorts and the activists; the lobbyists and the clinic defenders; all of you. You’re engaged in holy work.